Trial and Tribulation
by ILoVeWicked
Summary: Santiago Marquez, a man suffering in the bad economy, is taken for the ride of a lifetime when he is selected to serve on the jury of the crippling case of Katie Kent versus Violet Turner. PLEASE READ AND REVIEW!
1. Summons

**Disclaimer: I do not own Private Practice. All hail Shonda Rhimes.**

**A/N: Hey everyone! So, as previously mentioned, I wanted to write a season finale fic that deferred from Heaven Help My Heart (though it will still include that whole scenario, the chances of what happens in Heart happening on the show are one in a billion)...but I wanted to take a different spin on it. Instead of picking up right where the final episode left off, I decided to flash forward to a few months after the incident, told in the point of view of a jury member at Katie's trial. I know it's not exactly traditional, but please give it a chance and review! Thanks so much!**

**-ILoVeWicked**

It had been a pretty sucky day, and that was putting it lightly.

I combed my fingers through my sweaty black hair, which had been greased back for nothing. The economy had put everyone in their rightful place, including myself, which meant I had been let go from my very stable job as an associate at an advertising company and was on the hunt to find some way to support my family. So far I was oh-for-three with the job interviews. It seemed like no one preferred hiring a well experienced, educated, mature Hispanic man nowadays…not even at Starbucks. I'm sure all of the corporate heads got together and came up with the brilliant idea to hire teenage bimbos who could hardly grasp the concept of minimum wage.

Grumbling as Egg McMuffin splattered down the front of my only suit, I continued to stomp down the busy streets of Los Angeles. I pushed against the general flow of traffic towards town, all people in business suits similar to mine, all people with money to bring home. I figured this was God's way of informing me that I was a failure. I had flubbed three interviews back to back, destroyed my only presentable article of clothing, and I had been mashed against at least three backs of sweaty construction workers on this ninety-seven degree day. And that was just this morning. Glancing at my watch, I was mortified to discover that it was only noon. I still had the rest of my day to look forward to.

Home used to be something I enjoyed returning to after a long day of work. Home was where the heart was. In these tough times, unemployment faced me with more down time at my house than I had seen since the seventh grade, and I had begun to hate my foyer. Every time I entered my home in broad daylight was only another cruel reminder that life had taken a turn for the worst. Shaking my head and jingling my keys in one hand, I sighed as I glared at my front door, so red and welcoming. Man, I hated that door. I had insisted we paint it blue. Blue was at least a little subtle.

I took a step towards the point of no return when I tripped over my nine-year-old daughter's pink scooter and nearly cracked my head open against the mail box. Glittery ribbons from the handles wrestled with my tongue as I angrily spat them out. Spewing curses—hey, the kids were at school, and there was no rule against cussing alone—at the Barbie contraption, I jammed my hand into the mailbox, grabbed the thick stack of envelopes, all most likely junk, and stormed into the house. I was sure to give the neighbors a good show as I slammed the cherry red front door shut for the grand finale.

Were you happy yet, God? Because I'm pretty sure that I was miserable enough by that point for you to stop throwing black cats and wide open ladders at my face.

By that point, I was so fed up with the whole day—the whole week, actually, as I had been let go on Monday and had since been continuing the routine of being shoved aside since—I thought maybe, just maybe, the junk mail might cheer me up. Who knows…maybe my fishing catalogue that I had been persuaded into ordering from my five-year-old son's magazine drive had finally come in.

An advertisement for hair growth ointment was at the top of the stack. That went immediately to the shredder, but not before I callused my suave dark locks in the mirror just to make sure we did not have a situation on our hands. Then Geico wanted me to switch to their car insurance. The mail had turned to scraps in a mere few seconds. Seeing as I could barely keep a roof over my family's head, switching to Geico was the last thing on my mind. A few credit card bills were placed on my wife's desk for her to handle later. A LL Bean backpack magazine slipped into my lap. I rolled my eyes and pushed it aside, seeing as school had started two months ago.

And then, there came the last envelope. What was inside was far from _Hook, Line and Sinker. _

Now, understand that I am a proud Puerto Rican at heart. My grandparents had immigrated into this country when my parents were too young to understand what was happening. I went to church every Sunday, spoke fluent Spanish, and ate traditional meals from my hometown. Yet I still loved the country I was born into. Like it or not, I was an American citizen. Proud to be from two amazing cultures. Though when I reached the final envelope, being of the same origin as Abuela Claudia never sounded so endearing.

A jury summons. For the eighth of November, which was a week from today. As an American, I am expected to do my part for society. But this part, which cut a whole job hunting day out of my agenda and screwed up my schedule, was not how I imagined serving the United States. I scarcely watched the news, finding out only the biggest stories from people by the water fountain at work, so I had no idea whether I had been enrolled in a custody battle or an assault trial. Either way, I was making the thirty minute haul to city hall on November eighth.

Later that night, the summons still on my mind, I crept downstairs, careful not to pull another scooter incident with one of my son's trucks. As I munched on a late night snack at the kitchen table, the kids and wife sleeping soundly upstairs, I pondered next week's adventure. For all I knew, they could consider me too biased and waste my whole day. With my luck, it wasn't out of the question.

I had no idea what was about to happen as I stepped foot into that court. The morning of November eighth, two thousand nine, my life and the way I looked at it changed forever.

**Review and I will be eternally grateful. ;)**


	2. Number Eleven

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

**_Number Eleven_ **

The rustic-looking old man sitting opposite from me at a wooden desk seemed utterly and completely bored. Anyone with eyes could detect that. I took another look into his squinty, colorless eyes and sighed. I had been waiting in line for my turn to be interrogated for at least two hours, and I suppose my emotions were going haywire by that point. The screaming infant of a very busy single mother three people behind me even looked bored from my perspective.

"Name?" the man asked without even so much as a glance in my direction. Oh yeah, this old goat was bored to death. I peered to my side, where a cheery blonde lady was questioning another cheery blonde lady. I think I may have caught something in their conversation about station wagons. Staring back at the blunt, wrinkly face in front of me, I realized that it was just my luck to be stuck with Little Miss Sunshine. I sucked in another mothball infested mass of courtroom air and folded my sweaty palms across my lap.

"_Name_?" the old man asked again, sounding more agitated than he had before, which I was sure could not be achieved. I fumbled around in my seat clumsily for a moment before returning my attention to those cold eyes that burned.

"Um, Santiago Marquez," I replied quietly, thickening my tiny accent just for kicks. The man began scrolling my name down in the NAME slot on an index card placed perfectly square in front of him, but not before scowling at me. I could easily have cheated and read the next few questions, but I'm pretty sure I would have been frowned upon for doing so.

"How old are you, Santiago?" the man asked.

"Thirty-four."

Little by little, the questions started becoming more and more personal. Each question, I was told, was to be answered as honestly and as accurately as possible.

"Married?"

"Yes, for ten years."

"Wife's occupation?"

"Chef at a five star restaurant," I answered smugly. If my wife refused to do it, bragging rights automatically went to me, the husband. Maybe this grumpy man had a good taste in food and just so happened to sample my wife's brilliant cooking while strolling through Santa Monica. He was blatantly unamused with the surplus information.

"Any children?"

"Two."

"Gender and ages, please."

"A nine-year-old girl and a five-year-old boy. Lila and Marco."

The old man used this opportunity to breathe onto his musty glasses in an attempt to try and see through them, all before I could go on about my kids.

"How often would you say you keep up with the news, Mr. Marquez?" the man inquired without looking up, his chubby fingers caressing his lenses.

I suddenly began to perspire profusely. The news…wasn't that kind of important in court? I watched the news about as scarcely as I washed my car, which was about once every year. E-Mail took precedence over the top headlines for me. And the newspaper? Forget about it. I wasn't one of those dads who lazed around drinking orange juice and reading the paper every morning. I always had a train to catch. By the time I got home, there was no time to read the paper before the next day rolled around and my reading was yesterday's news.

How often do I keep up with the news? Was that a trick question? I could have easily lied and said I was an avid news watcher. This man did not know me. But I was supposed to answer honestly, wasn't I? Court, in some ways, struck me as a sort of church. Lying in court would be comparible to breaking on of the Ten Commandments. What if the truth wasn't what these people were looking for? Even if it wasn't, would I be allowed to go home if I didn't watch the news at all? Rubbing the back of my sweaty neck, I settled for the truth.

"Uhm…honestly…very little. About once a year, actually. I heard the big stories through people at work," I admitted. The older, wiser man let out a 'hmph' and scribbled that humiliating piece of information down on his card.

"And what is your occupation, Mr. Marquez?" he asked finally. Sighing at the familiarity of this guy to my former boss and the use of the name I had gone by for twelve years, I dreaded answering this more than the news question. I can't say I didn't see it coming; after all, this man had no idea who I was and was clearly just doing his job by asking me that question. But still… Ouch, that one hurt.

"I am…currently unemployed," I choked out. It was the first time I had ever admitted it aloud, and what I would have thought would be a wave of relief came as a huge smack in the face.

What nearly sent me free falling from my chair was the look on the man's face after I answered the question. The left side of his mouth was curved upward; his brow was wrinkled in concentration.

I'll be damned...he was trying to _smile. _

If smiling for this gentleman took this much effort, than I must have been lucky after all to at least get a half-smiley-half-grim-partially-serious face out of him. The only question ringing through my mind was: what the heck was he smiling about?

"Alice!" he suddenly called over his shoulder. All heads, even the jabbering women beside us, turned like a wheel on itself to face me and the old man. I slumped down in my seat and groaned. Just what I needed: unnecessary attention. Alice, a petite brunette, came scurrying in, clipboard at hand.

"This man," the old guy started, jabbing a thumb in my direction but refusing to still make eye contact, "is exactly we're looking for. He knows absolutely nothing."

Thanks, old man. _That_ didn't make me feel even more unsuccessful.

Alice clapped her hands together in a girlish manner. Some of these people were too cheery to be working in a court, if you ask me. They could use some lessons from Oscar the Grouch.

"Perfect! And he makes eleven!" Alice cheered. She grabbed my forearm with more force than I would have imagined from such a tiny woman and began leading me toward two very large wooden doors behind the interrogation tables. "Right this way, sir. The trial should begin shortly."

So close. One more person ahead of me couldn't have known a little less? I was too busy scorning whoever had it in for me up there to notice the booming paparazzi beyond those large wooden doors. The first blinding flash opened my eyes to the chaos ensuing all around me and Alice. Murmurs referring to me as 'Jury Member Number Eleven' stirred from all directions, sending my head into dizzy oblivion. This was no custody battle. That was for sure.

Alice swatted several cameras away and continued to lead me through another set of doors, to another group of people. I felt like I had just been led onto the set of a court movie, the towering pillars, velvet curtains, and arched ceiling fitting my personal musings to a tee. As I took my seat beside an angry looking man, I felt a sudden surge of anticipation wash over me. Not knowing what to expect was all a part of the excitement.

My fellow jury members eyed me with suspicion, but said nothing. The silence in the courtroom compared to the hubbub outside of the courtroom was unsettling to Jury Member Number Eleven, to say the least. Cutting through the silence and the tension like a knife, a whistle broke through the air. The muffled sounds of the paparazzi behind the doors went mute. A bailiff stood at attention in the center of the courtroom, arms folded across his chest.

"All rise for the honorable Judge Alexander Cleary," the bailiff demanded in a husky, intimidating voice. My legs sent me zooming upward faster than any other jury member. I looked around the room and blushed. Scratch that previous thought, faster than anyone else in the room. More unnecessary attention was piled upon me, the bailiff's being the hardest to bear. The rest of the audience followed my lead in hesitant silence.

A tall, middle aged man swept gracefully into the room, his thick black robes billowing behind him like ripples of fudgy dark chocolate. Judge Cleary seemed to carry a certain seriousness about him that made the man at the table earlier look foolish.

I looked over toward the plaintiff's table, at the backs of a man gripping onto a shivering woman, then over toward the defendant, sitting erect, and understood why. Judge Cleary literally held the weight of the world for some people. The cloaked man took his seat, and so did I…this time following someone else's lead.

One smack of the gavel, and the court trial had begun.

"We will come to order," he spoke, his voice containing less volume than the bailiff's had, but more intensity. Unlike the other guy, this man was chock-full of eye contact, throwing it this way and that, proving others in the audience of their insecurities.

"Thus hereby convening the case of Katie Kent…"

Katie Kent, a short, homely looking raven haired woman stood and nodded quickly. I noticed the shackles around her wrists and ankles jangling along with her, clashing with her form-fitting floral frock with a matching blue sweater, and cringed. The judge bowed his head slightly, a signal for her to take her seat. Katie clearly did not catch on and was eventually yanked back down by her attorney. Pity washed over me for this woman. She hardly looked like the criminals I had seen on TV and imagined: tall, big-boned, angry. I could have easily passed her on the streets and said that she was a regular woman.

"Versus Doctor Violet Turner," Judge Clearly continued. I didn't bother trying to pick out Violet Turner. Out of the corner of my eye, a man's arm tightened around that shaking woman, and that was all I needed to see.

The case was already becoming too heavy for me, and I hardly knew what was going on between these two women. Judge Cleary spoke, "Bailiff, please present the case to the court."

The bailiff returned to the spotlight, papers at hand. He cleared his throat and sent the court simultaneously jumping with his thundering vocals.

"These are judicial proceedings under the state of California. Accused is Katie Kent, tried for breaking and entering into her therapist, plaintiff Violet Turner's home, injecting her with foreign, paralyzing medications, forcefully removing Doctor Turner's unborn child from her body through cesarean section, attempted kidnapping and murdering said child. The baby boy was found dead, with finger-print sized bruises around its neck and its lips still attached by the cord to an unconscious Doctor Turner, who was lying in a puddle of her own blood when they were discovered by Doctor Pete Wilder. Mrs. Kent pleads not guilty to this case."

"Thank you, Bailiff," the judge murmured as the bailiff made an about face and marched back to his seat. "Defense attorney Frank Bourne, please call your first witness."

A cocky looking short man with a pudgy face and a devious smirk stood and turned to address all of us.

"Defense calls Katie Kent to the stand, Your Honor."

**Thus convenes the trial of Katie Kent vs. Violet Turner...OooH, don't I sound all judgy?! Honestly, I love court scenes in pieces. Something about them gets me fired up and interested. Just ask me what my favorite part in _To Kill a Mockingbird, Baby Mama, The Hessian, _or _Legally Blonde_ was. I watch Judge Judy whenever I catch it on (Judge Judy rocks). And while I'm being honest, I have no idea how court works. I literally had to look back at my judicial branch notes that I took in September in school to figure out some of the terms, as well as looking back at the trial in TKAM. So if the facts are a little shaky, my apologies. Now Katie's gonna testify...that was a lot of fun to write ;) And still to come are the testimonies of the characters people actually care about (sorry to any Katie fans out there...if there are any). Stay tuned and please, please, please review! **

**-ILoVeWicked**

**PS- Form fitting floral frock. Try saying that five times fast, cause I know it was a little difficult for me to type ;)  
PSS- Who else is all stoked up for Chandra's guest appearance on PrP?! It's about time one of them brought their lazy bums down to LA, and Doctor Bailey is the cooliest! Yay!**


	3. The Truth

**Disclaimer: …Still not mine.**

_**The Truth**_

There was something peculiar about Katie Kent, though I couldn't put my finger on it. Maybe it was the way she swore herself in enthusiastically. Maybe it was the initial instinct that she didn't strike me as the criminal type. Maybe it was the fact that she had assaulted her _therapist _and killed another woman's baby. Maybe it was her face, and the way she just stared everyone who dared to look at her with starry eyes and a cheerful smile. Maybe it was the vibe that I got from her prompting me to run away before she acted out again.

Mr. Bourne started talking, and I stopped thinking. Thinking was a mute point.

"Mrs. Kent, you started seeing Doctor Turner last year on account of previous mental conditions, is that correct?"

"Yes," Katie cheered from behind the stand, "that is correct."

"Was Violet Turner helpful to you as a therapist?"

"Oh, of course! In the beginning, she was extremely helpful. I overcame a lot because of her, and it was because of her and Doctor Bennett that I was finally able to get pregnant."

Mr. Bourne's eyebrows, two thick caterpillars residing on his swollen face, rose. "So you were pregnant?"

"Yes."

"But what happened to your baby? What led you to taking Miss Turner's child when you were pregnant yourself?"

"Well, I did not take _Miss Turner's _child. I was simply retrieving mine. Doctor Turner stole my baby from me!" Katie shouted accusingly, her bony white finger pointing in the direction of the plaintiff's table.

The courtroom erupted in heated murmurs and quietly concealed gasps. Among the hushed pandemonium, I spotted Mr. Bourne's sneer. He done exactly what he had intended to do: make Violet look like the bad guy. For all I knew, the smaller woman very well could have been. Judge Cleary slammed his gavel down, and in three hard raps, the courtroom had turned silent again.

"No further questions, Your Honor," Mr. Bourne informed the judge smugly he moseyed back to his place at the defense table.

Katie was about to follow, a puppy obeying its alpha, when the other attorney, a thin gray-haired woman who pointed out in every direction stood, pen at hand, and marched up to the witness stand.

"Not so fast, Mrs. Kent. I have a few questions myself," the woman announced briskly. Katie slithered back into her seat, looking bemused now that she was being interrogated by the opposite side.

"Mrs. Kent, just how did Violet Turner steal your baby?"

"It wasn't just her. They were all behind it. I went in for an ultrasound, and they said my baby died. They wanted me to believe that my baby died, and they wanted to take her out of me. What I later realized was that my baby _didn't _die. Doctor Turner's did, and they wanted to take my child so _she _could steal it. I wasn't going to let her steal my child…no, I wasn't."

"Mrs. Kent, I have here that in your medical records, it states that you were expecting a girl. Doctor Turner's child was a boy. Can you explain that?"

"I know it sounds crazy, but I'm not crazy. I know she took my baby."

"You're avoiding the question, Mrs. Kent. Were you aware of this significant gender difference in the children?"

"I trusted my instincts…"

"Did you or did you not know that Violet Turner's child was a boy, Mrs. Kent?"

"Objection!" Mr. Bourne called out. "She's badgering the witness!" The judge sent the attorney a warning glance.

"Mrs. Pfeiffer…" he began, the tone of his voice indicating that he knew this lawyer's antics all too well. Mrs. Pfeiffer held up her chewed pen, her eyes wider than Katie's.

"I'm just trying to point out that Mrs. Kent was aware that her child was a girl and that Miss Turner's child was a boy," she insisted. The judge nodded.

"Overruled. Continue."

"Now, Mrs. Kent…"

"Yes!" Katie huffed in aggravation. "I knew!"

"So if Violet's baby was a boy, what led you to believe she took your baby girl?"

"Like I said, I can't explain it, but that sneaky woman stole _my_ baby after _hers _died! How many times do I have to repeat myself!?" Katie whined. At this point, I could see traces of her mental instability in the way her left eye twitched every time Mrs. Pfeiffer said 'baby' and the way she was in complete denial over the loss of her child. Such a noteworthy difference in babies would have led any sane person off their high horse immediately.

"Just move on, Mrs. Pfeiffer," Judge Clearly urged, tiredness one of the many levels standing out in his voice. Mrs. Pfeiffer nodded. Katie had made her point, and there was no budging from her on that.

"So what did you do after this realization, Mrs. Kent?"

"What else? I went to Doctor Turner's house to get my baby back."

"Did she try to talk you out of it? Resist at all?"

"I was one step ahead of her. I found this _amazing _stuff on the internet that would freeze her body from the neck down for a while so I could get my baby out of her with no mess. But yes, she did try to talk me out of it. And she almost had me for a second…but I knew her evil plan. I knew that my baby was inside of her…"

"Where did you find the equipment needed to remove the baby from your therapist's body? Did you use household materials or…?"

"No, no, silly! I found the medical tools I needed on the internet! It's a wonderful thing, that internet!" While Katie cheered over the wonder that has been around for over a decade, I noticed the judge and Mrs. Pfeiffer swapping a eccentric look with each other.

"What did you use those tools for?"

"I used them to cut Doctor Turner's stomach open so I could get my baby out of there! I wasn't about to wait until she went into labor! I needed my baby right then and there."

"How did you know how to perform a C-section when you have no medical background, though?" Mrs. Pfeiffer inquired. Katie rolled her eyes.

"The _internet_…duh! And Doctor Turner finally came to her senses and talked me through the whole process. Once I got her to settle down, it was very easy to get the baby out. He had the most beautiful cry. Ten perfect fingers and ten perfect toes…"

"Then what happened?"

Katie's eyes suddenly became glassy; she suddenly became a different person. Beyond the glass was a mental gas puddle. Mrs. Pfeiffer may not have seen it, but I, who have worked with plenty of crazies in the advertisement business, could see that she was asking for trouble. One tiny comment, one lit match, was all it would take to set her off. It was eerie, watching someone make the transition from a little crazy to insane at the speed of light.

"I was just about to cut the cord when I saw…I saw…" The entire courtroom seemed to be leaning forward in anticipation.

"What did you see, Katie?" Judge Cleary pressed, moving to a first name basis with the accused. Katie's lower lip trembled and her eyes began to fill with the first batch of tears this case had seen. I had a feeling that they would not be the last.

"Headlights! From a car…they were on Doctor Turner, and they crept up until they landed on me!" Katie cried, her body racking with tearless sobs. Though the tears were visible, they were oddly staying in place, surely blurring not only Katie's vision, but her thoughts as well.

"What happened after you saw the headlights?" Mrs. Pfeiffer asked patiently, her strict mannerisms edging off in caution, like a new teacher dealing with her first preschooler's meltdown. Katie sniffled and continued wearily, her story less coherent due to her backed up sinuses.

"I wanted to just wrap my baby up and leave, the back window was easy to get open, I could tell. But I still hadn't cut the cord, and he was crying so, so, _so_ loudly…I heard the sound of a car door closing, and I knew I would get caught if he didn't shut up. I had to get him quiet, just for a few minutes, until the intruder went away."

Funny she should use the word 'intruder' to describe Violet's presumable rescuer. What did that make her?

"I heard this rustling coming from just outside the door, and I could tell that whoever it was had to be looking for Doctor Turner's house key…"

"What was Doctor Turner doing by this point?" Mrs. Pfeiffer cut in. Katie shrugged weakly.

Katie's armor was slowly being let down by this other woman. The tough-yet-happy girl façade was not her, it would never be her. I could see that Katie thought Mrs. Pfeiffer was heartless, cruel. What Katie could not see about this lawyer was that she was just doing her job.

But weren't we all just doing our jobs, when you think about it? Wasn't Katie doing what she felt was _her _job, being a mother to her child and protecting him? Violet's job as a therapist was simply put as work to her, soon turned into her worst nightmare, but she was just doing her job. Hell, _I _was just doing my job: listening and doing my best not to outburst, inherited from my obnoxious line of family members. We were all just doing our jobs, a circuit in the courtroom that kept the case pulsing and alive.

Mrs. Pfeiffer, I could assume, was your typical lawyer shark. At least, that was what she wanted to come off. I bet that somewhere deep, deep down, the attorney had a feeling for Katie Kent. Whether that feeling was pity or distain or jealousy, I would not know. Her goal was to allow the courtroom and the witness to convey that she had no feelings, that she was baseline. From a government official's objective standpoint, she was a fantastic lawyer, not allowing the jury to form a bias based upon the attorney. From Katie's standpoint, she was public enemy number one.

"She wasn't moving. I couldn't tell she was breathing, actually. Her eyes were closed. I assumed she was dead already," Katie admitted, shivering. "There was blood _everywhere_." Mrs. Pfeiffer nodded.

"How did you handle the baby problem, Mrs. Kent? Did he stop crying?"

Katie squeezed her eyes shut. The first, singular tear slid down her pasty cheek. "I…I…I put my hand over his mouth to get him to shush, but he was so loud, the person outside would have been able to hear him. So I…" She stopped abruptly and shook her head.

I swallowed hard. Mrs. Pfeiffer gazed up at the judge, who reluctantly looked down at Katie. "Mrs. Kent, please finish your answer." Katie shook her head again, vivaciously, tears now in full current.

"Mrs. Kent…" Judge Cleary pleaded. Katie continued gesturing no. The bailiff took a tentative step forward, in case the patient was going to flee the scene. Katie saw this movement out of the corner of her eye and let out a blood curdling scream that set my nerves on fire.

"I wrapped my hands around his neck and shook him! I was just trying to get him to be quiet, I told him that! But he wouldn't stop…I couldn't tell I was shaking him harder and tightening my grip on him! I didn't want to sneak out the window alone and leave my baby there. I didn't mean to kill him!"

There it was, the admittance in itself. What was before a bunch of whispers and pointing fingers had turned into what looked like a tornado of shock. The world around me had exploded into tears, screams, gasps, remarks…yet, I did nothing. I didn't even blink. Nothing could remove my eyes from Katie Kent's tortured face. She wasn't a criminal. She was certainly guilty, but she was not a criminal. She still felt love and guilt. She was human, and she was hurting. Amidst the shock of the noisy courtroom, I could hear Mrs. Pfeiffer tell the judge that she had no further questions.

Ten slams of Jude Cleary's gavel, and the courtroom, with the exception of Katie now back at her seat, was muted.

"I request a recess. Ladies and gentlemen, court will reconvene in fifteen minutes."

**A/N: So there you have it, the fun stuff (well, it's not exactly _Hairspray_, but you get what I mean) has begun. I'll be totally honest, Katie scared the crap out of me during that season finale (GREAT acting on Amanda Foreman's behalf, though) what with her INTERNET gadgets and such. So writing Katie up at the witness stand was pretty tough...having to add her mental problems, her innocence and still the fact that she was as guilty as it got was tiring, that was for sure. But I hope you like it, and again, I hope that my courtroom jargon is all correct. I would give away who testifies next, but I would rather it be a surprise ;)**

**On another note, thanks a bunch to frk'nsweetheart for your faithful reviewing so far! As for the rest of my many readers, please, please, please take a few seconds out of your day to review! C'mon people! 75 hits so far and only 2 reviews!? You could write two words for all I care, I would just really love to hear your feedback on this, since I'm trying my hand at a completely different storyline than from what I'm used to writing. Thanks so much!**

**-ILoVeWicked**


	4. The Whole Truth

**Disclaimer: I don't own…I RENT! Sorry…wrong fandom. **

_**The Whole Truth**_

"Hello?"

"Jen!" I breathed, relieved to hear her soft voice fill my ear. Her voice felt like home to me. I could almost swear I felt her satiny auburn locks grazing my hairy forearm. My lips pulled into a puckering pout with the taste of her favorite lipstick. I could see her face right in front of me: those perfect, big hazel eyes, those millions of freckles, those long, lush eyelashes.

Through every bad moment since high school, Jen had been there. The day I fell down the bleachers at a pep rally and was graced with two brokwn arms, she held my hand the whole ambulance ride over and did not let go until the next morning. The day my father passed away, she crawled into bed with me and held me while I cried. The day I lost my job, she poured us two glasses of wine and sat out on the porch and talked with me all night, like nothing had happened. She was my best friend, my rock, my angel, and my wife.

"Hey," she regarded me sweetly. It felt good to know I was loved by _someone_. "How's the trial thingy going? Did you get picked?"

I sighed. It took all of my energy into not freaking out at her. Jen may have always been there, but I could not exactly say the same for her. I tended to dump my negative energy on her. No matter if it was as simple as not being able to set up the hammock in the backyard, Jen always got the short end of the stick with my running Latin American temper. She always took it like a man, and way bigger man than me at that, but she wasn't to blame for this trial. My cards had been drawn by fate, and fate was getting the temper tantrums from me that day.

"Yeah, I did. The trial…it's…going."

Jen chuckled softly from her end. I could practically picture her sitting at the kitchen table, kids on their way home from school as she prepared their afternoon snack of cheese and crackers into little animals with toothpicks. I longed to be with her, have her sitting in the space in my arms that fit her just right.

"What do you mean, it's going?"

I glanced at the wall clock, a ticking bomb to everyone in the lobby. Nine minutes was all I had to finish my conversation with my wife. Great.

"Did you hear about some Katie Kent case on the news at all?" I asked, knowing that Jen was the polar opposite of me when it came to keeping up with the world. I could hear the clattering of several toothpicks falling against our table and sighed. Of course, she's heard of it.

"Omigod! And you…Santiago…"

"I know."

"Is it bad?"

"If you want to call a woman admitting that she killed a four minute old baby that didn't even belong to her bad, then yes, I would say that this is all bad, Honey," I barked. The other end of the line was silent, and I could tell that she was soaking in my negatives and turning them into positives for her own use. As I sat there and remembered Katie's confession, I wondered how _anything _positive could come out of this. A baby was dead. I was in the presence of a murdurer. Fear jumbled my thoughts and blurred my vision.

"Listen," I mumbled, running my fingers through my hair and stopping short, at the back of my neck, "I'm sorry. It's just…I didn't see this coming. I wasn't even expecting to get picked, and even if I did, I thought this would just be, like, a paternity case or something."

"Not the paternity case you had in mind, I guess," Jen mused. Dark humor, which she never used, shrouded me with guilt. I sucked in a jagged breath, unaware of the red rimming around my eyes. "I'm guessing you're not making it home till later?" I nodded into the phone, praying that being sequestered would not be the case. I would not be able to take another day of this without losing my mind.

Just like that, nine minutes went by. People made no excuses as they shuffled past me and edged me closer to those dreaded wooden doors, like an ocean pulling out a poor sand crab out into its vast body to drown.

"Yeah. I'll talk to you soon," I told her. Reaching to close my phone and return to the case when I heard Jen call out my name from inside the small machine.

"Yeah? Are you okay?" I asked. The last thing I needed was someone breaking into _my _house and hurting the woman _I _loved. Jen laughed. It was short-lived, but it was there.

"I just wanted to tell you that no matter what happens, I love you," she told me. My lips tingled with the unfamiliar sensation of a smile as I grinned from ear to ear.

"I love you too," I whispered.

_~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~_

"I call Doctor Addison Montgomery to the stand, Your Honor," Mrs. Pfeiffer called out once the dust had settled in the courtroom.

Tall, toned legs stood and tiredly made their way to the stand. I nearly wanted to smack myself for letting that little bit of drool swell at the corner of my mouth, like I was some high school dog again.

Addison was the beauty in the breakdown. Crimson wisps of fire encased the creamiest looking skin, eyes that held the seven seas, and rosy lips as light and delicate as rose petals. Her face was flawless, not a pore out of place. But the emotional flaws were ever present in the way her smile faltered ever few steps. No matter how many times she tried to put the pieces back together as she placed her trembling angelic hand on the Bible, there was no denying how easy it was to see through her mask of composure.

"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" the bailiff asked. The doctor, now looking windblown after standing face to face with the Hulk himself, nodded.

"I do."

"You may be seated."

Mrs. Pfeiffer used the moments Addison wasted in making herself comfortable up on the stand to scan the other woman from the tallest hair on her head to the very bottom of her stiletto. Her pen resting firmly on her chin, Mrs. Pfeiffer shifted her weight to her opposite bony hip and began with the prosecution.

"What is your medical profession, Doctor Montgomery?"

Addison—such a beautiful name should not go to waste—raised a fist to her mouth and cleared her throat. "I'm a world class neonatal surgeon," she replied in a deep, sultry voice that led me to believe she had chosen the wrong career path. Model or _goddess_ was more like it.

Now I was ashamed. You have a _wife_, Santiago! A beautiful, loving, intelligent, understanding wife who has bore you not one, but _two _beautiful, loving, intelligent, understanding kids! I was beyond happy with the choice I made ten years ago. I flushed with embarrassment. Okay, so I drifted off the path once. I was a man in his thirties; I was allowed to do that once in a blue moon. Addison was beautiful, but it was safe to say that she was no Jennifer Marquez.

"And you're newer to Oceanside Wellness Center as an OB-GYN, is that correct?" Mrs. Pfeiffer asked for clarification. Addison nodded into the microphone.

"Yes, that is correct."

"Were you present on the day of Katie Kent's ultrasound, the day you discovered the baby did not survive in her womb?"

"Yes, I recall being present for the news."

"Do you remember how Mrs. Kent reacted?"

"At first she swore we were just kidding. Then, she got extremely upset and left without letting us remove the dead fetus from her body. She was in complete denial of the death of her baby. If she did not remove the child immediately she would have severe health problems." Addison's breath filtered the air as she sighed. "She kept staring at Violet with this strange look on her face...I should have guessed."

"How acquainted with Violet Turner would you say you are, Doctor Montgomery?"

"I wouldn't call us best friends…just close co-workers," Addison remarked, the smallest hint of a smile on her face as she stared down at the defense table in front of her.

To say that this redhead did not care for Violet Turner would be blasphemous lie. This tragedy had brought her closer to her 'co-worker' than either of them could have imagined, I'm sure. The power of friendship was a tricky thing, appearing at all the wrong times, with people your wildest dreams could not even muster up. But the power of friendship, along with the powers of love and hope, were ever present in this courtroom. It was almost a little heartwarming to realize that. Key word: almost.

"Around what time were you called about the incident concerning Doctor Turner?" Mrs. Pfeiffer inquired. Addison's mind was on vacation, replaying every minute of that night in her head. I could practically see the cogs and whistles of her memories at diligent work.

"Around ten or eleven o' clock, I would say."

"Who did you receive this phone call from?"

"Charlotte King, Chief of Staff at St. Ambrose Hospital called in concerns to a code red, but she never mentioned that it was Violet in trouble until I got there."

"Was that on purpose?"

Addison shook her head, a dance of fire twirling and swirling on her shoulders. "No, no. Everything was happening too fast. I just got over there as fast as I could. Charlotte was dealing with a lot, I'm sure."

"What did you face once you made it to the hospital? What damage did Doctor Turner suffer?"

Addison's forehead creased, recalling the operation.

"It was probably one of the hardest procedures I had to do. Katie may have read where to cut and all online, but she was way off with her scalpel. She suffered a great deal of damage and lost a lot of blood from her abdominal area. A broken nose and a large bump on the head were also present. It took a whole lot of quick work, no room for mistakes. One false move and Violet could have died herself. The stakes were raised extra high, seeing as there was a personal connection between the patient and I. But we managed to stop the bleeding and stitch her back up, and she stayed stable through most of the night. Overall, the surgery was a success."

"And the baby?"

"It was too late. The damage to his neck and head had taken immediate impact, being a newborn. He had been dead for quite some time, way before I had gotten the phone call to come to the hospital to save Violet. It was clear to see that he had been murdered through a combination of strangulation and shaken baby syndrome. We sent him to the morgue once I fully assessed his injuries."

"And how have things been since at the practice?"

Addison shook her head in dismay. Her eyes averted to the ceiling, and I knew in that moment that God was getting a lot of hate from this courtroom that day.

"Horrible. The number of patients has been slow, due to the fact that everyone is afraid of what happened. We no longer have a therapist, as she is in therapy herself. We no longer have a fulltime pediatrician or Western medicine practitioner either, and just recently, we lost our fertility specialist."

Addison chose that moment to send blue daggers towards the back of the courtroom, where a coffee-skinned, distraught looking woman was standing and watching the case fold out. The power of friendship was also at war with the powers of hate, resentment and tension.

"And have you seen Doctor Turner since this tragedy?"

Addison nodded. "Yes, I paid her several visits."

"How is she?"

"Is emotionally unavailable a valid response?" Addison pursed her lips. There was more to the story. There was always more to the story. It was just the nitty gritty details, the conflicts and the appalling denouement, that we chose to avoid rather than face. Mrs. Pfeiffer half smiled in apology.

"I'm afraid it's not. Care to elaborate?" Mrs. Pfeiffer. Addison nodded after a moment of hesitation. There were some phantoms better kept beneath the trap doors of our minds.

"She won't let anyone touch her, not even Pete or Cooper. She doesn't speak anymore, the most anyone can get out of her is a sob or two. She doesn't _look _at you, she _stares _at God-knows-what. Literally, a piece of Violet Turner has been ripped from her," Addison explained, her voice taking on an eerie monotone quality.

"Last question: how has this whole experience made _you _feel?" Mrs. Pfeiffer ask. It was the first personal question I had heard all day. In a world of statistics and evidence, it was a relief. Addison sighed.

"More than anything, I feel helpless. One of the two doctors running what is supposed to be a six doctor practice, and not being able to help someone who's been hurt, someone who I've seen in a better light…that is what kills me," Addison admitted, bare and naked with emotion.

Mrs. Pfeiffer, from a distance, seemed to have tears in her eyes. Making her way back to her seats, she slyly disguised the fault as an itch and muttered, "No further questions."

Addison, whose gazed was fixed on the defense attorney who was preparing his own set of questions, stayed put. The frumpy looking defense attorney, whom I had now referred to as Mr. Troll due to his 'under the bridge' appearance, was practically skipping up to the stand to begin the cross-examination. The fact that his client had basically turned herself in earlier hadn't fazed him one bit.

"Doctor Montgomery, what were you doing the night of Violet's assault, prior to saving her life?"

In her frantic eyes that could no longer find a focus, I could see that Addison's inner world, the safe haven of her own denial that she had built up, was crashing all around her. Her mouth contorted into all sorts of shapes and sizes as she racked her brain for the words that made up her existence in this room, in this moment.

"I—I was coming out of a delivery and then watching over our midwife Dell Parker's daughter, Betsy, while he finished the delivery up."

Mr. Troll had obviously been thrown a curveball, as he was evidently not aware of Addison's whereabouts that night to begin with. His eyebrows rose with a new type of suspicion.

"Finished up the delivery? What do you mean by that?"

Addison, a tangle of emotions, took a large breath, the noise hitching like a stone skipping over water.

"There were…complications between the patient and I," Addison explained after a gulp, looking no where near as satisfied as she had aimed to be with her answer. Mr. Troll jutting lips were on the verge of creating more mayhem before Mrs. Pfeiffer shouted out to the judge.

"Objection! Relevance?"

"Stay on topic, Mr. Bourne," the judge chided the older man. Mr. Troll flushed a dark purple. At first, I had guessed the stocky man wasn't getting enough oxygen, but I'm sure he felt proud to be reprimanded by a man half his age in front of an entire courtroom, the breathtaking redhead in particular.

"No further questions," he muttered, plans to foil the great Addison Montgomery firing back at him. Judge Cleary wiped his already dry, cracked lips and demanded the bailiff call the next witness to the stand.

"We call Doctor Pete Wilder to the stand, Your Honor."

**And so it continues. Originally, I had planned for Pete and Addie's testimonies to go together, but I got way too carried away with both Addison and Pete's snippets and if I had put them together, the chapter would have been monsterously long. Anyway, I hope you are all enjoying this story so far. It's harder than I thought to write the way a total stranger sees these well-known characters. I don't feel that this story (this chapter in particular) is my best writing job, probably b/c I've got a million other things on my mind, so any kind of review or feedback would be much appreciated. Thanks!**

**-ILoVeWicked**


	5. And Nothing but the Truth

**Disclaimer: I do not own Private Practice. **

_**And Nothing but the Truth**_

Pete Wilder made me feel self-conscious. Looks, charisma, confidence…he kicked my butt every time. It felt like I was back in middle school PE all over again. Slouching further down in my seat to hide my face behind the poofy perm of the woman in front of me, I listened as Pete's deep voice filled the room.

"I do."

"You may be seated."

"Doctor Wilder," Mr. Troll began, "you are a doctor of Western medication practices, is that correct?"

"Yes."

"And you have been working at Oceanside for three years now, is that also correct?

"Yes."

"Violet Turner had been working at Oceanside prior to your arrival, so therefore you were always acquainted with her, right?"

"Yes."

"How would you describe your relationship to Violet Turner?" Mr. Troll finally got around to asking once he built Pete's foundation. Pete smirked.

"Sexually?" he joked. Mr. Troll laughed dryly and narrowed his eyes at the man who chose to don a leather jacket to testify in court. Mr. Troll saw a wise-ass. I saw a man who was using humor to get past his pain.

"Overall," Mr. Troll clarified, snake eyes nearly turning Pete to stone. Pete nodded, feigning innocence.

"At first, it was nothing. Your typical on-again, off-again couple thing. But then she got pregnant, with a baby who may have been mine...and as I started to care for the Bug, I started to care more and more for her. I loved Violet. She made me happy for the first time in a long time," Pete answered, letting his guard down.

I looked around at the straight faces of the other jury members and fought back a huff of frustration. Did any of them notice how he had used past tense throughout that entire speech besides me, or was I reading into things too much? Mr. Troll began pacing back and forth, a habit I found very annoying in lawyers.

"But in a recent paternity test, I have in my records that you were _not _the father of Doctor Turner's child, a Mr. Sheldon Wallace was. Is that correct?"

Pete swallowed hard, his face grim. Fresh bags, hangover bags, under his eyes indicated how he was planning to wash away his sorrows. "Yes, that is correct. But that doesn't take away from the fact that I loved both of them, that I was willing to fight for them."

Okay, so maybe I _was _reading into things too much. I knew for a fact that wouldn't be the case if I couldn't care for my own baby.

"I didn't ask that. Doctor Wilder, what were your intentions of visiting Doctor Turner on the eve of the alleged assault?"

Now, I'm not one to judge based upon what I hear in court, but wasn't that a little foul play on Violet's behalf? There were two possible fathers, which had to mean there had been some sneaking around, some cheating, and some unprotected sex. Yet, the results of the paternity test were 'recent'. One of them was bound to get screwed over in the end. This brilliant idea was clearly no good, seeing as how messed up Pete looked.

I had no idea who this Sheldon Wallace (unlike Addison Montgomery, _this _name was just plain unfortunate) guy was, but I was rooting for Pete the whole way. Pete seemed like the kind of person I could meet at bar and would be best friends with after only an hour of mulling over beers and the Dodgers. Such a man I would never expect to be so passionate about fatherhood. Then again, I never considered _myself _the barbeque and soccer game kind of type. Living in the eighties was something I had planned on doing for the rest of my life.

Then, Lila came along, and the second her tiny hand flexed and curled around my finger, I knew that I would trade in my high school years in a heartbeat for my little girl. Marco only enforced the joy of parenthood inside of me to a greater extent. There was no greater love than the love between a parent and a child, my mother would always say.

Pete seemed much like me, in most ways. Confident in the clear cut path he had built for his life. Similar to myself, he swayed once a child was in the picture. Children, without sounding too clichéd, _were _our miracles. Some people were just too busy being stubborn adults to really look into the toothy smile of a six-year-old boy and realize that.

But unlike me, Pete's child had been torn from him, leaving him cold with obliterated false hopes. Even poor Sheldon had never gotten to witness the testosterone-altering blessing that was the warm, delicate body of an infant.

Mr. Troll did not seem to stand on the same point as me. Obviously a man without children, Mr. Troll was unable to be unshaded, unable to truly get a glimpse of Pete Wilder's heart to see that it had been broken and that he, the trollish jerk with overly-rehearsed, exuberant hand gestures, was no help to that matter. Pete spoke up at last:

"We were moving in together, we had established that the afternoon of the attack, and she had left for the day because she was way overdue. I thought we ought to celebrate properly: dinner and a movie, or something." It was a good move. I could tell that he had made it up for the sake of not looking entirely crazed for sex in front of this agitated defense attorney.

"Could you hear anything coming from inside Violet Turner's house?"

"At first…no. But then I heard the sound of a baby crying, and I thought that maybe Vi was watching Discovery Health or something to freak her out even more about being a mother. That sound, that crying…it was too surreal. I never assumed that it could be my baby crying in there."

"Did you hear any other voices?" Mr. Troll asked. Pete nodded slowly, half of his long face falling into the shadows of the late afternoon.

"There was another voice. It was a woman's voice. Frantic. I thought that maybe it would be the doctor or something, and that it must have been one of those complicated births on TV. If I had connected that it was Katie's voice…I would have not taken my time outside," Pete admitted.

"What happened after you heard the voices?"

"My key was stuck, so I was busy messing with it when…the crying stopped suddenly…and I heard a window sliding open."

"Once you got the key working and made it inside, what did you see?"

Pete's memories horrified him, and I could see that plainly by the look of nausea on his face. The details of the events and what he saw when he stepped into his then-girlfriend's house, which he had blurred for the sake of staying together, were becoming fine-tuned before the entire courtroom. Pete blinked back the salty film of his tranquility.

"The first thing I saw was the window. Wide-open and letting the wind in, I could tell that someone had used that as their escape. Then I saw all the blood, and Violet and the baby lying unconscious in the center of it all."

"What were your first thoughts?"

"To check their pulses, of course! But I didn't have to be a rocket scientist to see that my possible child had been…murdered," he remarked, the last and hardest word swirling like venom in Katie's direction.

"And Violet?"

"Violet's was faint, but it was still there. So my next instinct was to call 911 and then to get Addison over to St. Ambrose. I never let go of her hand that entire ambulance ride, not until they pried my hands off that gurney. The rest of the night just consisted of me waiting…that's all I know."

"One last question: Are you still in relations with Violet Turner?"

Pete sighed. "Yes and no. Technically, we are no longer a couple, but I still take part time off from work to help Cooper, her best friend, out with the post partum depression." He caught a glimpse of the Troll's face of disapproval and one of his fists began to clench.

"She doesn't necessarily express an opinion to me being there, so I figure I want to help her out as much as I can. I still love her. I always will, " Pete added to smite the troll man. Simmering, Mr. Bourne muttered something inaudible. Unbelieveable, the troll _still _couldn't see how hard Pete was taking it all.

Pete's voice was noticeably choked, his heart hanging by the gallows of reality. Love was all he had left. It was the one thing that kept him holding on. As I gazed over at a hunched over Violet Turner at the defense table, I realized that love was also the one thing tearing Pete away.

"No further questions."

As Pete stepped down from his pedestal, Judge Cleary's eyes darted immediately to Mrs. Pfeiffer. All day, the two lawyers had been cut throat, throwing glares and snide remarks this way and that just to win over the other, insisting upon cross-examinations. Mrs. Pfeiffer, however, looked emotionally and physically drained as a hand ran circles over her temples.

"Mrs. Pfeiffer?" the judge asked. There was an unmistakable look of surprise on the honorable man's face when Mrs. Pfeiffer shook her head and stood.

"I have all the information I need to know from this witness. Thank you, Mr. Bourne," she stated in her best diction. Mr. Troll even looked taken aback by the woman's sudden lackadaisical attitude as he gasped.

"Do you have any more witnesses?" the judge managed to choke out past his shock. Mrs. Pfeiffer cast a glance over her shoulder. The courtroom let out one, simultaneous sigh.

"Just one more. If she is willing, Judge Cleary, I would like to call Doctor Violet Turner to the witness stand."

Judge Cleary raised an eyebrow. His gavel, which he had never let go of the entire trial, was clenched in his left fist.

"Miss Turner?"

Several audience members could not contain their own gasps of shock at what followed Judge Cleary's question.

Violet Turner, the one voice the world had been waiting to hear, tore herself out of the grip of the man holding onto her and stood.

**A/N: Heyo! So originally, since the Addison/Pete chapter didn't work out due to length issues, I just thought, "Eh, no big deal. I'll just put Pete's testimony with Violet's!" Didn't work. I just can't get my point across without writing fifty pages in the process... And as far as Pete not being the father of the baby...the real answer is up in the air for me. For a while, I was so sure it was Pete (and I really, really hope it is), but then I started second guessing myself. So I just mix the paternity up in my fics, b/c I honestly don't know who it's going to be. I thought Shelley (yes, although Sheldon is an icky little man, I think he deserves a nickname) being the father only added to the drama aspect of this story...hence he won this time around. So thanks for reading, stay tuned, and please, please, PLEASE review! **

**-ILoVeWicked**


	6. So Help You

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

_**So Help You **_

"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" The bailiff's voice seemed to lower eight octaves in Violet's presence. She stared at him with wide, skeptic blue eyes.

"I do." The tense pink lips formed the words from my standpoint, but only the bailiff was able to announce the proceedings. Once she had cautiously faced the audience in the witness stand, I could get a good, hard look at her face.

Violet was a wilted flower, once blooming with beauty and radiance. Not only did her inched back posture and nervous facial expressions give that away. Addison had hit the nail on the head when she had claimed Violet to be 'emotionally unavailable'. Staring toward the wooden panels at the back of the courtroom, Violet's blue eyes, shielded by limp brown ringlets of hair, no longer held the spark they alluded to once have. Her porcelain face was a ghastly gray color and she was a mere pile of skin and bones, almost as if she were a living, breathing corpse. I cringed and realized in horror that Violet Turner was scarier to me than Katie Kent had been.

Mrs. Pfeiffer had removed her gold breastplate and replaced it with the fuzzy suit of compassion. Stepping forward slowly, she was careful not to startle the key witness. It was a shock Violet had even _willingly _gotten to the stand. The last thing the court needed was to have her bolt out of fear, which seemed to be the element this doctor's life was built upon now.

"Doctor Turner, what exactly does your medical profession, a therapist at Oceanside Wellness Center, consistent of?"

For a moment, Violet went unresponsive. She continued to stare ahead, as if the question had gone in one ear and out the other. This was a mighty brave thing for her to do, going from never speaking to the people trying to help her to speaking into a microphone in front of a full courtroom. I admired that bravery, but I could only take so much silence. With a throat clearing from the judge, Violet shook like a wet leaf and zapped back to life.

Never removing her eyes from the fragile fingers in her lap, she spoke, as quietly as a mouse, "I…um…I see a patient going through a…difficult t—time…mentally. I assess their…um…issue and work with them to…overcome it?"

Violet's bright white teeth chomped down on her lower lip and gazed up at her attorney, as if begging for Mrs. Pfeiffer's approval on her answer. Mrs. Pfeiffer smiled and nodded.

"Very good. How long have you been working as a therapist, and how long have you worked at Oceanside?"

"Eleven years as a…therapist and…um…six years at…Oceanside."

"Have you always wanted children?"

"If…um…you had asked me that question nine months ago…I would have said never, I'm sure," Violet admitted. "I've always seen myself as a…a…_terrible_ mother."

"But you were pregnant…"

"By mistake. There were two guys at once…and it was all so crazy…and then a _baby _came into it all. The thought of being a…mom was bad enough; I couldn't stand to see…Pete or Sheldon's head on my kid."

"And how long had you been seeing one of your patients, Katie Kent?" Mrs. Pfeiffer asked.

Violet squeezed her eyes shut at the mentioning of her nemesis, releasing one, single tear. I felt a pang in my chest and urged myself not to cry along with her. This prosecution was like watching someone slaughter puppies, and it had only been five questions.

"About eight months," Violet answered meekly, her hands acting as broken levis trying to prevent the flood of tears. Mrs. Pfeiffer inched closer to the witness stand, the one currently handed the job to catch Violet if she fell.

"For what mental conditions was Katie visiting you on account of?"

"She had…uh…a mental condition where…she needed things to be the way she…planned them…in her mind, or else she would get temperamental. She…it came to a point where…she wanted a…a…"

"Baby?"

Violet finally let the most painful-sounding sob come directly from her gut as she nodded. "Yes."

"Was it easy for Katie to get pregnant?"

"Not at first, but I got Naomi…" She cast a look to that same woman in the back that Addison had been glaring at, whose tears were also running with mascara at full fledged force. "I got Naomi to help me, and the procedure was…successful."

"But then what happened at the ultrasound?"

"Somehow…she miscarried and the fetus…died…in utero. Addison, Pete and I tried to…um…get her to let us remove the…dead…fetus from her body so she would not suffer from serious complications…"

"Would Katie allow this?"

"No, she refused to believe that her child had…passed away. But after our receptionist Dell talked to her…she finally let us go on with the procedure."

Mrs. Pfeiffer leaned inward. "You're doing great, Violet. Just a few more questions, and you're finished," she whispered to her with a wink. Violet wiped the cascading tears from her beautiful eyes and nodded swiftly.

"How was Katie after the event?"

"Surprisingly…normal. Pete was saying that…um…during his session with her, she seemed euphoric about her loss, which was…odd. I just thought he was…over exaggerating, so I thought I would find out for myself what was up with her during our session," Violet explained, her tears still ever present but less heart-mangling to observe.

"At our appointment, she wouldn't talk about anything other than my pregnancy, my baby, my stomach…she seemed way too interested in _me_ to be mourning her miscarriage. I assumed that she was off her meds and over the edge…but I was told by Pete that I…um…I couldn't diagnose someone out of a…feeling. I was told that maybe Katie was just…happy."

"I thought I knew happy," she muttered to her lap.

Wasn't happiness just a matter of opinion, though? Who _really _knows what happiness feels like? Violet's definition of happiness could differ from my definition of happiness. Happiness was a word, a feeling, but no one truly _knew _happy.

"What happened after your appointment with Mrs. Kent?"

"I went home to rest…and I was waiting for Pete to get home from work. Then the doorbell rang…the last person I expected it to be was Katie…"

"How did Mrs. Kent get a hold of your address?"

"I don't know. I asked her myself, and she apologized for crossing the line, but she…she just said that I had her baby, and she wanted it back. The last thing I remember before blacking out…was Katie sticking me in the shoulder with a syringe of some sort."

Little by little, the story was inching towards the climax. Violet could obviously sense this as her eyes darted frantically around at the three escapes. Mrs. Pfeiffer took another step forward, closing in on her.

"What did you see when you woke up?" she asked. Violet shook her head.

Her eyes immediately found their way to the defense table, where the man who had been clutching onto her was nodding encouragingly. I would have loved to know who the heck that guy was. Maybe the infamous Sheldon was bobbing his head incessantly. Maybe it was her father or brother. I would never discover the answer.

"I saw Katie…pulling out medical tools. I was on the floor…couldn't move from the neck down."

Her breathing was suddenly becoming shallower and labored as she recalled her worst nightmare's events. Violet's hands found the side walls of the enclosed space around her and fought her hyperventilation. Mrs. Pfeiffer and the Judge Cleary waited patiently while Mr. Troll's expensive leather shoe sole tapped with irritation. As for me, I just wanted to claw my head off so I wouldn't have to see or hear any more of this.

"Doctor Turner…" Judge Cleary began.

"Give her a minute!" Mrs. Pfeiffer snapped at the higher government official as she grabbed a nearby wastebasket in the case that her client would lose her entire stomach's contents.

Violet, after a few more excruciatingly long minutes of gasping for air, finally composed herself, tears resurfacing. "Katie explained that she was going to remove my child from my body and take him back where he belongs. There was no need for me to worry, she said. She read all about the procedure on the internet and had gotten the tools she needed."

"Did you try to talk her out of doing this to you?"

"Yes. I tried to get her to remember what happened to her baby, but she wouldn't hear it. She finally remembered that her baby died, but then quickly claimed that it was my baby who died and that I had stolen her baby for my own selfish use. I tried to point out the gender difference, but Katie trusted her instincts that I had stolen her baby. She said she knew it sounded crazy, but she was a normal person who knew to trust her first thoughts. I told her I believed her thinking process, but I also thought that it was my baby growing inside of me for months and that I loved him, and if she cut, she would hurt the baby."

Unlike her hesitant answers before her episode, Violet was now answering the lawyer's questions swiftly and fluently. I'm sure everyone who had been certain that she wouldn't speak under this pressure was nearly hyperventilating themselves. This professional lioness was worlds different than the previous fearful, timid kitten that answered in fragments. The only similarities between her answers were the constant tears, reminders of her pain and peril, sliding down her flushed cheeks. Answering her questions more efficiently did not necessarily mean she was healed of her scars.

"Then it kicked, and Katie was convinced that it was calling her," Violet continued. Her hands found their way to wrap protectively around the flat plain of her stomach. "I tried to get her to wait, but Katie knew that people would never let her have the baby after what she had done to me. I tried to call her name…to get her to stop…but she punched me square in the face…I blacked out again."

"What did you see when you woke up from this blackout?"

"She was wiping the blood from my face, apologizing and saying that she would work as fast as possible. There was nothing I could do from that point on but scream for help."

"And did help ever come?"

Violet nodded, "Cooper…he came to the door…and I tried to call out his name, but the doorknob stopped jiggling after a few seconds, and Katie had gagged me with the rag she had used to wipe the blood off of my face. He was gone."

"Then what happened?"

"Katie looked at me, and for a moment, I thought I was going to be set free. But she simply told me the truth: I was going to die."

"Were you afraid?" Mrs. Pfeiffer asked in sympathy for the younger, terrified woman in front of her, for the court to hear the pain first hand. Violet considered it for a moment, and her eyes widened with realization.

"No…not for myself. I was afraid for…my son. My Bug. I made sure the last thing I said to Katie was where and how to cut me open correctly and to cut the cord as quick as possible and keep the baby warm. He didn't deserve it…to die, I mean," Violet whimpered.

Then, I did it.

I, the manly man I was, sniffled.

It was the only way to keep me from bawling like a baby (no pun intended). I mean, here was this woman who never planned on having children, considered herself a horrible mother, and had been so afraid of something that had once been smaller than her fingernail. Yet, by the end of her pregnancy, she loved that baby enough to put his life before hers. Regardless of whether either of them lived or died, Violet made sure the last thing she tried to do was save her baby the best that she could. And then there was me: someone cursing the world for not having a job when I had everything Violet Turner could have wished for…a family. It wasn't fair that I was let go from work, but it also wasn't fair that Violet's son died that night.

There was always that primal difference in our losses, the diversity that triggered that sniffle most. A job I could always get back. Violet never got to have that first moment of eye contact with her baby. Violet would never get to hold her baby. Violet would never get to be a mother. And as far as I knew, the income from being a parent was far more rewarding than the income of a therapist or associate advertiser.

_Why God?_ I thought. _Why would you choose me?_

The sniffle wasn't exactly volcanic explosion loud, but louder than I had ever wanted it to be. Most of the spectators of the trial chose to ignore my little moment, as there were many people crying in that room besides me. Others turned their heads simply to see who made the noise and focused their attention back to the stand just as quickly.

But one person's eyes stayed locked with mine. I felt myself grow hot and red in my tan face when Violet Turner stared at me with those listless eyes of hers. Unlike Addison or Pete or even Katie, Violet's mind was unreadable to me. Those eyes were a force field in itself. I'll never forget those eyes…the eyes that often wake me from my sleep to this day.

There was no way of telling what was going through her head at that moment our gazes locked, and whether or not she could read my mind will always haunt me as a mystery, but after Mrs. Pfeiffer's voice turned her away, the feeling that washed over my senses told me that there was a mutual understanding between the brunette woman and I.

"Did you feel the cut at all?"

Violet shook her head, looking a bit more shaken, like she had earlier. "No…I…I didn't feel anything. It wasn't until I started noticing how much blood was all over that my mind started to imagine the pain. It was awful."

"Were you aware of Pete Wilder coming to the door or hearing the baby crying?" Mrs. Pfeiffer inquired. Violet's hand groped at the nothingness of the air as her breath caught.

"Yes, I saw the headlights and I heard the front doorknob moving again, and I thought it was Cooper. But before that…there was something before that…" Violet's left hand fell over her forehead as she tried fruitlessly to recount that something. Mrs. Pfeiffer gave it a whack.

"Was it the sound of your baby crying, Miss Turner?"

Violet's eyes welled with new tears. "Yes…he was crying."

"It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard," Violet added, the tip of her nose turning red.

It suddenly hit me like a bolt of lightning. Whether or not she was aware of it, Violet would always be a mother. The physical child in itself would never be present, but the feeling every parent felt, that love for their child…that would always leave a permanent imprint on her heart.

"What else did you see or hear?"

"Since I was lying on my back, I relied mostly on the sounds I heard. The doorknob sounded a million miles away compared to my son's crying. God, it was beautiful…"

"Did you hear Katie trying to quiet the baby at all?"

"Yes." Violet suddenly gasped, a shaky hand covering her dry lips. Mrs. Pfeiffer was nearly projected through the roof at the sound of Violet's horror.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

"I remember now. Katie was beside me, and my baby was in her arms. The cord was still attached to him…Katie kept screaming 'Shut up! Quiet down! Shut up! They'll hear you!' but he never shut up. And then she…she…her hands were wrapped around his tiny little neck, and he was shaking so violently…omigod…"

"Did you try to stop her in any way, Violet?"

Past her tears, Violet managed to choke out, "I tried to call her name, to tell her to stop and that she was hurting him…but I was too weak to get my lips to move. All I could do was lay there and watch her kill my baby while I quickly slipped into unconsciousness. The last thing I remember was hearing the window open."

"When you awoke, what did you see?"

"I was in the hospital. The first thing I saw was Dell's daughter Betsy, whom I suppose was put on watch while everyone else was taking a break. She ran out without a word. I had no idea what had happened the night before. I thought maybe I had gone into labor or something. But when my hands came to my stomach…he wasn't there."

"Is that when you knew?"

"Yes, the memories started rushing back at that point. It wasn't until Pete came darting in and started weeping that I knew he was certainly dead. It's the worst feeling in the world, to have something you grew so attached to, something you loved, taken away from you."

"How have you reacted since your learning of the news?"

"I was diagnosed with post-partum depression just a week after I was released from the hospital. I'm on constant medication, which causes mood swings, and I am currently seeing a shrink. I can no longer do the same things I used to do without thinking of how my son could have been in my arms with me. I hate being touched…it only reminds me of Katie cutting into my stomach. I don't want to speak, because I fear I'll hear my screaming again in my voice. You have no idea how difficult it is for me to be saying these things right now. In short, life has changed too drastically for me to handle. I hate every minute of my existence, because every breath I take is a breath my son never got to take."

Mrs. Pfeiffer sighed. "Last question: why did you agree upon suing Katie Kent for the assault and break-in of your privacy and the murder of your child?"

"I feel for Katie…" Violet said, her voice morphing back into the quivering frantic whisper she had entered with. "I really do…but if she gets put away…maybe a part of me will…feel better about…my son…being…dead."

It was at that moment that the post-partum depression kicked in. Violet literally broke down, doubling over her scarred abdomen and sobbing recklessly. A curtain of hair shielded her face, which I was grateful for. But the sounds…so poignant and hopeless…they broke my heart. Mrs. Pfeiffer was at her side in a heartbeat.

"Thank you, Doctor Turner. No further questions, Your Honor," she regarded the judge as she escorted Violet's entire weight back to the table when a familiar voice prevailed above Violet's wailing.

"Just a minute, Doctor Turner. I have a few questions myself."

Oh, goody. Because we _all _enjoyed hearing what the troll had to say.

Judge Cleary sighed. It had been a long day for this man, longer than anyone else in this courtroom. At the end of the day, regardless of Mr. Troll's snarky attitude, the judge was still looked upon as the bad guy for one of the sides, as his decision mattered most.

"Mr. Bourne, she's already left the stand…" the judge practically whined. Mr. Troll shrugged.

"So I'll ask my questions right here," he responded, showing off with his hands the exact spot on the floor where his feet were located. "I just need to point one thing out."

Mrs. Pfeiffer looked like she so badly wanted to object, but the freshly opened can of Violet's emotions was tying her down at the moment. The judge allowed Mr. Troll to proceed.

"Miss Turner, just reiterate for the jury: you were well aware of Mrs. Kent's mental conditions, is that correct?"

Violet nodded in fear of the shorter man.

"And you did have the suspicion that she was off her meds and on the edge on the day of your assault, is that also correct?"

Violet nodded again, still limp at Mrs. Pfeiffer's side.

"So therefore it was on you that Katie came to your house that night and murdered your son, because you did absolutely nothing to help your patient."

"Objection!" Mrs. Pfeiffer bellowed. "Is that even a question?"

Mr. Bourne continued talking despite what the judge had to say to that matter. "Okay then, it was on you that Katie did what she did because you did nothing to help her, your patient, when you knew that something was wrong, is that correct?"

Violet bit her trembling lower lip. "I was told I couldn't commit someone on a hunch…"

"By who? Doctor Wilder, who has no background whatsoever in psychology? As a well-trained therapist, Doctor Turner, shouldn't you have trusted _your _instincts, as my client simply did that same night?"

There was no beating around that. Mr. Troll had Violet cornered under his little bridge. She nodded finally, defeated. Mr. Troll smirked.

"No further questions."

The judge rustled around his papers before speaking again. "Mrs. Pfeiffer, your closing statement, if you will." The thin woman nodded and took the spotlight at center stage, not a trace of fear on her face. She had clinched this case, and she knew it. Her main focus was the group I was sitting with as she made her final argument.

"Ladies and gentleman, it has been an eventful day. I'm sure all of your heads are spinning at this point. But if you choose to remember nothing when you walk out of those double doors, keep one thing in mind: Violet Turner cares. Whether or not Katie's story fooled you, you've heard from my client's very own lips that she cared enough to made sure that child, whosever it was, was taken immediate care for in order to live. Although there is a significant amount of evidence against Mrs. Kent, notice that Violet Turner refuses to resent her, because she cares enough to understand that there were idiosyncrasies that led Katie to do what she did. Now, this woman, who has lost virtually everything, chose to stand before you all today and speak her mind for the first time, showing you just how much this tragedy has altered her emotionally, physically, and mentally and how much she cares that it all be put to rest. This case is as simple as black and white, and probably should have never been brought to court. The answer is right under each and every one of your noses. Whether or not your answer agrees with mine is up to you. Thank you."

"Mr. Bourne?"

Mr. Troll swapped spots with Mrs. Pfeiffer. He seemed just as confident as she had. The phrase 'never let them see you sweat' was prominent in lawyers, I suppose.

"Men and women of the jury. I know you all _want _to believe that my client is some masochistic murderer going against the law to harm someone else…but think for a moment. Katie was simply acting out on what _her _mind told her to do, and Miss Turner, is full awareness of her own patient's medical history, did absolutely nothing. I know it may look like Katie is at fault here, but before you sentence her to prison, think about who listened to their heart, and maybe you can find it in yourselves to look past the proceedings in which Katie has been prosecuted for. Thank you very much."

Judge Cleary carefully looked between the two attorneys, his eyes reaching out like a fishnet to catch any stray arguments up either of their sleeves, before clearing his throat and adjusting his posture. "Okay, so court will reconvene once the jury comes to a decision."

The courtroom began to yawn with life. People stretched their legs and moved around to circulate the dead air lingering above their heads. Cool, so we got a break while the jury came to a decision…

Wait. In those countless hours of watching the headlining story fold out, the fact that I was jury member number eleven had completely slipped my mind. Alice had returned, clipboard on one hand, other hand extended toward me and my fellow jurors. And all this time I thought Judge Cleary had the toughest job.

How was I, Santiago Marquez, your average Joe, supposed to come up with the decision that could make or break Katie Kent and Violet Turner?

* * *

**A/N: I'm sorry that this chapter was excruciatingly long...but I don't think I could have handled dividing up yet _another_ chapter. And I'm hoping Violet was true to character...as a theater person, I've learned after months of working with my acting coach and getting into character (a very large struggle for moi) that I find it easier to write for characters when I get inside their minds (may sound crazy, I know, but it works for me), and after that season two finale, Violet's mind was like a freaking maze. I can only imagine how rough the first few episodes are going to be for her character. But the point is that it was hard, and I hope I didn't butcher this character any worse than I thought I had butchered some of the other characters. Alas, only two chapters remain. Since summer is winding down for me (GRR SCHOOL) fall, and all the auditions for fall classes and shows, are rolling up. Naturally, it's as stressful as anything, so some reviews (that means YOU people who still refuse to review after you put yourself through all that reading...and I see the stats, I know you're out there) would give my neck and head a very nice break ;) Thanks!**

**-ILoVeWicked**

**PS- Just thought I'd share a little "ILoVeWicked Has a Moment with PrP in Pop Culture" with you all:**

**I just watched Final Destination the other night with my friends (I will take this moment to say that I was forced against my will to watch it by said friends who know I hate scary movies. I mean, it was cool and all, but that freakin' movie stood for everything I fear most...plane crashes and freaky deaths and pretty much all horror, which scared me so much. Call me a wimp, but I would have rather watched Muppets in Space than this movie)...anyway, there's a point, I just needed to jab at the friends there...gotta love your friends, especially when they don't listen ;)**

**I recognized the face of one of the girls, and I could never figure it out until the girl was killed brutally (and very abruptly). Then, it finally hit me. So, in the very dark room, I got back at my friends for making me watch Final Destination by scaring the crap out of them when I screamed, "IT'S MORGAN FROM PRIVATE PRACTICE!!!" See? Revenge has it's perks. **


	7. The Verdict

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything.**

_**The Verdict**_

The room we had been led to was worlds different than the majestic courtroom all of our eyes had been accustomed to over the past eight hours. There were no windows; only one single light hung from the center of the ceiling. There were no paintings or posters to fill the empty window void either. The blank walls were a bland sage green color complete with a matching brown carpet. One grandfather clock stood tall and proud in the farthest corner of the room. Displayed before us was an oblong burgundy table, eleven glasses of water, eleven granola bars, eleven pieces of paper, eleven pencils, and eleven chairs. All that was missing was the eleven jury members.

Alice made sure we were all comfortable and situated before she spoke. "Okay, so you can take as much time as you all want to come up with a decision by majority ruling. Be sure to express your own opinions, as each decision made in this room is vital. Thank you guys so much!"

She shut the door to the outside world, and as I surveyed the terrified faces of the men and women around me, I realized I forgot to take what may have been my last breath of fresh air. Homesickness overcame my body like a plaguing disease, the rooms I had taken for granted beginning to lose their detail in my subconscious. How long this would take, only time would tell.

Immediately after the door was shut, a snowy haired man, who reminded me strangely of the troll with a mustache, spoke. "Katie should be ruled innocent," he stated, clear as day. The woman with the perm plugged her hear with her index finger in confusion--maybe she hadn't heard him right--and stared at the mustache man skeptically.

"What?"

"Mr. Bourne was completely in the right mind to believe that Violet was at just as much fault as Katie here. I mean, she's been a therapist for over ten years. She should have been able to see the signs that Katie was emotionally unstable, and even if she couldn't technically label her as on the edge, she should have trusted her instincts."

"But Katie has been put on trial for breaking and entering, assault, and murder, all of which she is very guilty of," another man who looked to be about my age objected. The mustached man snorted.

"Those were all acts out of her mental condition," he spat. "Even though she is guilty of those crimes, she is not guilty in the violent way one would think. And I repeat: Violet should have seen this all coming, as a therapist."

"Just because she's a therapist doesn't mean she could predict Katie coming to her house and cutting her baby from her body," a blonde lady in her twenties and wearing too much pink to be legal added. "You could work at a bank and the same thing could very well happen." The perm woman nodded in agreement.

"And what about trying to shut the baby up? How could anyone, mentally unstable or not, believe that a baby who had barely entered the world for three minutes could understand how to be quiet?" she asked, her many curls flailing about. By the look in her dark eyes, she was almost as rattled by this case as I was.

"I enforce this again with the fact that Katie's mind is in a world where everything has to happen the way she creates it to be, otherwise she panics. In this situation, when the baby would not stop crying, she panicked," the outspoken old man remarked in agitation, four chubby fingers folding over the other four.

Most of the jury members, myself included, kept our lips zipped. Alice said we had to express our opinions, but she never mentioned if they had to be expressed aloud or not. And besides, there was one big problem with my choice: I had no choice. Both arguments were equally valid, and the mustache man was awfully persuasive.

"If Katie is so 'mentally unstable', couldn't she be let off on an insanity plea?"

"Nah, I overheard Bourne talking with Pfeiffer…Katie refused to go for an insanity plea because she insisted that she was a normal person."

The old man slammed one hand down on the table, causing the small amount of water I had left in my cup to ripple. "God dammit, people! Plea or no plea, we have to look at this logically! Just because Violet shed a few tears and played the sympathy card in losing her baby doesn't make her a saint. There were _two _possible fathers to this baby. Clearly, Katie isn't the only one not playing by the rules here."

The man my age rolled his eyes and the blonde girl huffed. The woman with the perm bowed her head, pencil rolling in between her fingers. The room fell into that same eerie silence that had started the trial, my day coming full circle.

Oldie (and by that I don't mean the man across from me) the grandfather clock, who had remained silent during the entire spat, announced the seventh hour. Seven elongated, droning chimes rattled every bone in my body.

And after seven, it was eight, nine, ten, eleven…

Finally, after eleven mind boggling dongs of reminder, the old man had jolted back to life. He stroked his mustache with his thumb and index finger for a few moments before clearing his throat. His scratchy voice filled each of our ears with the painful memory of why we were all sitting silently in this room and twittling our thumbs.

"My vote is that she is not guilty. We've all had time to think about it…now, who's with me?" he said. The conviction in his voice that made up the old man's persona had been lost somewhere in those empty hours.

To my surprise, a timid looking woman with straight auburn hair hiding her eyes, who had seemed to fall behind all of the loud mouths, raised her hand. One by one, a man in a horrid gold sweater, a man whose only input had been sneezes this whole time, and a lady with gaudy rings on each finger joined in to prosecute Katie as 'not guilty'.

The old man frowned as he counted his followers. The man sitting beside me shook his head wildly.

"My vote is guilty. Who's with me?"

Perm woman and the blonde girl joined in right away. A man with eyes magnified ten times due to the fishbowls he had to wear over them as glasses swayed in his seat for a moment before raising his hand. A younger girl two seats away from me with an over-sized t-shirt on slowly raised her palm to the group, never removing her eyes from the spot they were glued to: her stomach.

It was the first time I really took a look at the people I had been sitting with for almost twenty-four hours. They were all people like me: all feeling emotions of different calibers at once, and they were all scared. Scared to think that something like this could happen, and scared to realize that its fate rested in their very hands. The jurors around me had all been given a number and as a jury member, we all had one job. But that didn't take away from the fact that no two people are the same. All this time, I had been referring to the jury as one singular human being. Clearly, as the one woman's flashy rings reflected off of the shy girl's long bangs, that was not the case at all. Mustache Man may prefer vanilla, whereas I prefer chocolate. It was all a matter of opinion, based on individuality, in this room. Just like Violet or Katie, we were all humans with rational feelings, just waiting to be understood.

I was rattled from my thoughts when I heard the soft coughing of the man beside me. All eyes were beamed in my general direction, unblinking and wide. I counted the sides. Five and five. A hung jury.

They were a hung jury, that is, until _I _made my decision.

I shut my eyes and buried my face in my hands, needing to break the fourth wall the eyes had created for me. In my head, the trial sped by like an old silent movie. I saw the bailiff, his voice scaring the crap out of everyone, Katie's face after admitting to killing the baby, Mr. Troll's smirk, the beauty of Addison Montgomery that had blinded me, Mrs. Pfeiffer wiping away that tear, Pete grimacing at the mentioning of Sheldon Wallace, Violet's meltdown... I was literally reliving my worst nightmare. The closing statements rolled through my mind like the credits.

As the clock struck midnight, I took a moment to stare into the total darkness, my mind frozen on one particular part of the trial. Without a word, I scribbled down my vote on the piece of paper and slid it forward, the memory still burning a hole through my skull.

Even though I was too stubborn to see it, ever since that moment in the trial, my decision had been made all along.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The courtroom burst with a whole new light when we all stepped back into the room following Alice. Whispers of spectators and the booming paparazzi behind us sent every hair on my body defying gravity. Since I had taken my good old time to make my choice, the rest of my fellow jurors, who all turned out to be cowards in the end, had dubbed me the barer of the news. One by one, the jury members took their seats and left Jury Member Number Eleven standing alone like a fool.

Judge Cleary looked exactly like he had when I had last seen him: exhausted. This time around, as he stared at me, I could sense a certain anxiety that identified with many of the unknowing audience members. Seeing as we had taken such a long time to reach our majority, I suppose the answer was up in the air. It always had been, but to the people who had come into court with their minds made up about who they would serve in the war, it must have been a wake-up call.

I nervously volleyed my weight from one ball of my foot to the other. Judge Cleary nodded with an encouraging smile. I imagined the faces of the people I loved standing in the audience, Judge Cleary's head taking the shape and form of my wife, to make me feel at least a _little _better about reading that damned piece of paper.

"We…um…the jury, hereby find defendant Katie Kent…" I stared at the woman looking up at me so expectantly beside the Troll and gulped. "…Guilty under charges."

Without so much as a regards from anyone, I plopped back down in my seat and finally inhaled and exhaled normally. Katie crumbled to shreds in her lawyer's unsuspecting arms, and Violet's jaw anchored in shock. Judge Cleary showed no biased emotion whatsoever as he slammed his gavel down for the last time, which was no help to me in wondering if I made the right choice or not.

"In that case, I hereby sentence Mrs. Kent to two lifetimes in jail for first degree murder, breaking and entering, and assault of her therapist, Doctor Violet Turner. Court is adjourned."

**A/N: So there you have it, Katie's as guilty as guilty gets. I don't know, I kind of wanted to make it seem like the whole "To Kill a Mockingbird jury takes forever" kind of thing...but I highly doubt that two page conversation realistically would have taken five hours. The more reviews I get, the faster I update the final chapter. **

**-ILoVeWicked**


	8. Trial and Tribulation

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. **

_**Trial and Tribulation**_

"No! No! Unhand me!"

Katie's screams pierced through the melancholy silence of the deadbeat courtroom. Her thrashing and kicking was useless in the strong bailiff's arms as he escorted Katie down the aisle, police surrounding them in every direction. She was out the door, and little by little, her screams decreased in volume, assuring the rest of us that it was safe to get out of there.

Mrs. Pfeiffer and Mr. Troll were reluctantly shaking hands with each other, lawyer cooties flying all around them. Judge Cleary had left without a word. I followed behind my fellow jurors as they filed out toward the aisle, but not before soaking in the glare of hate from the mustache man.

Addison Montgomery strode by, regarding us all with a smile. What would have turned me on at the beginning of the day only added to the cold feeling of nostalgia in the pit of my stomach. Pete, motorcycle helmet tucked under his arm, squirmed in between sweaty bodies of those conversing in the doorway without so much as a word. The African American woman who had been crying in the back corner was talking with a bald man. A blonde lady with an angry face kept her head down as she barreled past the audience members and the paparazzi.

As I looked back at the bench I had been sitting at all day, now empty of jury but filled with knowledge beyond my years, a feeling of euphoria washed over me. I had paid my dues, done my part for society. The hard part was over. Living with the aftermath, that was the next step.

Then, I felt the light flutter of someone's hand tapping my shoulder. I whirled around and nearly had the wind knocked out of me when I came face to face with Violet Turner. Her eyes were predictably blank, brimming with the endless possibilities of the conversation starter. Violet looked down at her hands, wrung tightly together and resting on her vacant stomach.

"I just…I wanted to say…I heard you during my testimony…and I don't know if you saw what I saw when our eyes had that…connection, I guess," Violet began, her voice small without the assistance of a microphone. I smiled in return and nodded.

"Uh, yeah," I lied, not sure if what she was feeling was what I was feeling. I had to remember that I was dealing with a therapist here…a troubled therapist, but a therapist who knew enough to see things from a completely different angle than I would have.

"But I just wanted to say…um…when I heard you and looked at you…I knew you would be the one," Violet continued, her eyes sparkling with tears of joy.

I was baffled. "How…?"

"Mr. Bourne made a tough argument. I knew that the jury would be torn…hell, by ten o' clock, I was so sure that Katie was going to win. But when I looked at you, I had a feeling you would be different. I know it probably sounds crazy, but my instincts told me your choice would have the greatest impact," Violet admitted.

I nodded along slowly, unsure, yet pleased, of how five seconds of eye contact could have had such an effect on both of us. That moment of understanding between Violet and I had been the seeing reason, the defining factor, which led me to rule Katie Kent as guilty. I was glad to see that I had made at least one person happy that day. I shuddered as I tried to imagine Violet's life knowing Katie was free and happy for what she did.

As I looked into Violet's face, now bubbling with the personality she had been lacking for months and knowing that I was the cause for it, I knew _for sure _that I made the right choice.

Out of nowhere, her arms were suddenly around my neck and strangling me of air. Violet Turner, a woman I had only known by name and story, hugged me as if I were a lifelong friend. Slowly, after the initial shock of it all, my hands found their way to rest on the small of her back, my own little hug in return.

"Thank you," she whispered in my ear. "For everything."

"Violet, c'mon, there's some reporters who are, and I quote, 'simply _dying_' to have a word with you!" the infamous back of the head at the defense table interrupted.

His five o' clock shadow, rolled up button down, and warm smile gave me a hard time believing that this was Sheldon. I was expecting someone on the dorkier side. I took another hard look into his chocolate brown eyes, bright and caring, and assumed that this guy seemed more like the best friend than the father of the dead baby. Violet sent one last smile in my direction; it was small, but it was enough for me to see that the hard part was over for her too.

"Let's go, then," she replied with a smirk, rolling her eyes as well. The man wrapped his arms around her relaxed shoulders, gave her body a tight squeeze, and started leading her away.

I watched the back of their heads descend into the sea of cameras until I was the last court-goer standing in the large room. Looking up at the huge, arching ceilings of city hall, I smiled, knowing at it was finally time to go back to where I belonged…home.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I had never been so grateful to see my big fat couch in my entire life. As the sun became a red sliver on the horizon, I fought the urge to kiss the hard-wood flooring I walked upon when I stepped into my foyer. Every step I took up the stairs to my bedroom was a burst of ecstasy.

I made a few detours before retiring for the night, of course.

Lila, Daddy's Little Angel big and bold on her pink pajamas, was curled into a ball against her wall of stuffed animals and Barbie dolls lined up perfectly on the edge of her bed. Her soft pink lips were parted open slightly as she inhaled the night air. I leaned down and brushed aside the bangs covering her forehead, and I kissed the bare skin falling before her hairline.

Daddy's Little Angel never seemed so true to it's meaning than that moment as I watched my baby girl, a carbon copy of her mother, rest.

Marco, my main man, clad in my old Power Ranger t-shirt, was snoring peacefully just across the hall. The interesting room theme combination of racecars and dinosaurs nearly made me laugh out loud. Reaching down, I ruffled his raven locks and observed as he stirred and placed his little thumb in his mouth to pacify on.

Superheroes may have been all over his clothes, but Marco was so oblivious to the fact that he was _my _superhero.

I could have sat there and watched them sleep for hours if I could have kept my eyes open. I barely bothered to make an effort in changing my clothes as I flopped onto my king sized mattress in exhaustion. Jen muttered something groggily before she rubbed her eyes and spotted me staring at her.

"Santiago! How long have you been back?"

"Just a few minutes," I answered, placing a peck on her lips. "I'm really glad to see you, Jen."

She smiled dopily and rolled onto her back. "How did everything go? Who won? Was it…?" I silenced her with a more passionate kiss. If I needed to think about the day one more time that night, I was sure the back of my head would pop off.

"Get some sleep," I commanded as I pulled her into my embrace. "I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. For now, I just need to hold you."

Jen said nothing, but nodded. I smiled at that face, even flawless during the middle of the night, and had never felt more at ease.

"I love you, Jen."

"I love you too, Baby," she responded with a yawn. And before I knew it, she was back to sleep, her chest rising and falling against my arms.

I craned my head to stare up at the moving ceiling fan. I had a certain someone to thank for my sudden change of heart, and I hadn't been all too respectful of him lately.

I prayed to God, thanking him for everything he had done for me on November eighth. I explained that I realized that this had all, from the summons to that moment with Violet to being the one reading the final prosecution, been a plan to get my life back on track. Being on the jury of Kent versus Turner wasn't an obligation, it was the opportunity of a lifetime, and I had the Big Man to thank for that. God had aimed for me to open my eyes, squinted on everything negative, and appreciate everything I have, everything that truly matters, because just as quickly as they come, they can go. He had never been against me; he was only trying to save me from a life of pessimism and misery. And for that, I owed him big time.

I tightened my grip on Jen. Job or no job, whether I found one tomorrow or in three years, every second with my family, my home, and my life were my number one priorities. They would not go to waste.

Every trial and tribulation of life had been crammed into one short day, teaching little necessities of existence to every person in that courtroom. This court case exemplified the most valued lesson a man could learn, and I, Santiago Marquez, was truly blessed to be one of the few men to experience that lesson.

**A/N: Da end! Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this! Thank you to my three incredible reviewers: frk'nsweetheart, Print Dust, and Girl007. Without your feedback, I don't know how this could have gotten finished. Thanks to those of you who read this as well! I really appreciate it, everyone. Please keep an eye out for my other works...till next time!**

**-ILoVeWicked**

**PS- I tried to make it blatanly obvious who the person behind the defense table was (and no, it wasn't Sheldon). Mad props if you can get it right, though. **


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